Buckingham Nicks A/U Series: That's What Love Is All About

Riding The Good Times Is Easy

Santa Monica, California
Independence Day 🇺🇸
Thursday, July 4, 2024
(4:00 pm)
*********************

"When I was just a little boy...standin' to my daddy's knee...my papa said, 'Son, don't let the man getcha and do what he done to me...'Cause he'll getcha..."

Stevie had just emerged on the deck on the second floor overlooking the backyard with two bottles of Heineken in her hands, and handed one to Lindsey at the barbecue grill as they sang along together to Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Born On The Bayou". After over five decades later, neither of them felt the need to verbalize their shared memories of opening for Creedence Clearwater Revival in San Francisco when they were in Fritz; the look they shared while Stevie passed the other bottle of beer off to Aaron's waiting hand nearby told them they were both thinking the same thing.

"Hey Stevie, is your brother around down there?" Lindsey asked, his concerned look going back and forth between his wife and the steaks that were grilling in front of him. "I have a meat question for him and Chris is the man to answer it."

"Not much," Lori joked as she walked past them on her way through the open doorway into the kitchen, overhearing their conversation. Everyone on the upper deck burst into peels of laughter, Stevie giving her ex-sister-in-law a playful smack on the shoulder for her bawdiness. It was Aaron who spoke up, pretending to cover his ears, beer in hand.

"Jesus, Aunt Lori, there are children present!" he teased, which resulted in more laughter from the people on the deck and caused the three little dogs nearby in the kitchen - Lily and Luna, as well as Amber's dog, Ocean - to start barking at the commotion. Stevie knelt to pet all three of them before she started down the stairs to the lower deck and the yard, still smiling over the joke.

"I'll find him," she told Lindsey, knowing her brother was amazing at the grill. "Last I saw he was tossing Roman into the pool and yelling, 'Sink or swim, kid!' so...now we know he's just drunk enough to dispense grilling advice." She laughed at her own joke on her way down the stairs.

When the Nicks family had gotten even smaller in 2011 with the death of Barbara six years after Jess, the annual Fourth of July barbecue pool parties had stopped for a few years. With Chris and Lori divorced and Jessi getting older, the annual party that had also always doubled as Jess' birthday celebration had seemed unnecessary. It was in the summer of 2019, just after Lindsey's recovery from his heart attack and subsequent vocal chord surgery, that Stevie and Lori's phone conversation late one night had resulted in the Nicks and Buckingham families deciding to bring the tradition back, in Santa Monica this time instead of Phoenix. The 2019 Fourth of July party had been a hit and the whole family had vowed to make it an annual event...and then, in March 2020, the Covid pandemic had hit, scrapping their plans for the next two years. But they'd been back at it again since 2022, Stevie telling Lori that if it was safe to be back on tour it was certainly safe enough to host a barbecue, and the tradition was in its third year that afternoon in Stevie and Lindsey's backyard.

"And I can remember the Fourth of July...runnin' through the backwood bare..." Creedence Clearwater Revival sang out of the outdoor speaker system Lindsey had installed with John McVie's help just after they'd bought the new house after coming home from the Say You Will tour in 2005. "And I can still hear my old hound dog barkin', chasin' down a hoo-doo there...Born on the bayou..."

"Aunt Stevie, Aunt Stevie, he says he's going to drown me!"

Stevie turned around to the sound of a tiny male voice coming from the pool. She smiled when she recognized the source - Christopher and Lori's seven-year-old grandson, Roman, wearing Spider-Man water wings in the pool and hanging from his grandfather along with Michael and Andrea, Olivia McVie's children. Roman's plea to his great aunt was playful. and all three children were happily squealing as Chris took turns tossing each child around the pool like beach balls. Stevie laughed at the sight of her brother, a seventy-one-year-old man with a gray ponytail and navy swim trunks, tossing the screaming and laughing kids around in the water like the Big Bad Wolf.